Virtually every town or city includes some type of physical setting used for the temporary hosting of gatherings, whether such gatherings are as simple as a town fair where people bring their wares and crafts for display or sale or barter, or whether such gatherings are as large as industry tradeshows having 2000 or more exhibitors covering 1.5 million square feet of convention floor space.
What generally stands out for these gatherings is the temporary nature of the displays and exhibits. In a typical convention center or the like, the basic structure is simply one or a series of large rooms, defined mostly by ceilings and perhaps the occasional support pillar and little else. For a typical convention or exposition, then, personnel representing each exhibitor arrives one or several days prior to the convention to oversee erection and assembly of a booth. Each exhibitor is assigned a floor area based on the size of booth for which the exhibitor has paid, and labor is employed for all assembly aspects.
In fact, in all states except Minnesota, all labor expended is the responsibility of local, highly-paid labor, regardless of an exhibitor's ability to perform the labor on its own. When an exhibitor arrives with a truck containing the exhibitor's booth materials such as electronic displays or wares, the major convention centers require local, highly-paid labor to unload the truck and deliver the materials to the booth site on the convention floor. Additional local, highly-paid labor is then used to install carpeting, electricals, lighting, etc., for the booth. This highly-paid labor is also utilized to build temporary structures for a particular booth, to provide an improved aesthetic for the convention as a whole, or to provide common areas, such as an information or directory booth and eating areas. All told, all labor at many convention sites is not local and highly-paid other than the exhibitor personnel, and the visitors or conventioneers. Other than pop-up displays, all labor within the booth is such local, highly-paid labor. For a number of reasons, it is difficult for a convention center to avoid the use of this local, highly-paid.
Staging of a booth by an exhibitor is expensive. As described, the use of local, highly-paid labor is expensive. Additionally, the electricals and lighting and carpeting and plumbing, for instance, are each installed for each booth at every show, and the labor is effectively discarded when the show is taken down, as are most materials; stock carpeting is sent for cleaning, and custom carpeting (such as that bearing an exhibitor's logo) is discarded. The booth materials that are brought by an exhibitor are expensive, in the order of $15,000 to $20,000. If an exhibitor attends two shows simultaneously, the booth materials costs to the exhibitor are doubled. Additionally, transportation of the booth materials and the time for exhibitor personnel are costs to the exhibitor. It is noted that, for a typical convention hosted by McCormick Center, owned and operated by the City of Chicago, Ill., set-up for the convention begins three days prior to the show's opening, the set-up being performed by the local labor.
An alternative to convention centers utilizing temporary booths is an industry or merchandise mart. Not nearly as common as convention centers, merchandise marts are similar to shopping malls in that a space is leased as a permanent display, built to specification for a tenant. While having the advantage of permanent walls, electricals, lighting, and flooring, the spaces at marts and malls are much more expensive, require a long-term commitment for a tenant, and are static in their display. As should be clear, such permanent displays do not lend themselves to the short-term usage desired by convention exhibitors, do not allow for rapid set-up, and require a full and permanent display in every location in which the tenant desires exposure.
Visitors or conventioneers, whether they be exhibitor personnel or simply industry personnel visiting the exhibitors' booths, are in a variety of classes or groups, depending on function. As examples, in relationship to a single exhibitor, visitors to the exhibitor's booth may be potential buyers of the exhibitor's goods or services, may be potential vendors, may be speakers or industry reporters, may be potential employees or partners, and may be competitors (exhibitors or not) looking to gain a grasp of other industry players.
Typically, visitors are given identification while in attendance that demonstrates their authorization to enter and be present at the convention, and this identification may present an indicia of their function, such as buyer or exhibitor personnel. One manner for providing the function indicia is to color code name tags so that exhibitor personnel stationed at a booth can recognize a visitor approaching or present in the booth as a potential buyer, for instance. The exhibitor personnel can then tailor a personal interaction with the visitor towards what the potential relationship warrants. However, the exhibitor personnel do not commonly have the ability to tailor the actual booth exhibit to the visitor, nor do the booth and exhibit support such tailoring.
From the visitor's perspective, navigating an exhibition hall can be somewhat daunting and result in wasted personal time and energy. As noted above, some exhibitions are hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, square feet of exhibition space. The exhibition space is organized into rows or aisle defined by the booths installed for the exhibition. As it should be clear, the result is aisle lengths that, when summed, add up to distances measured in miles. With conventions hosting 2000 or more exhibitors, it can be difficult to find the precise exhibitors that a particular visitor would like to, or has been sent to, visit, particular if the visitor desires not to waste a significant amount of time searching the convention hall or not to constantly backtrack between areas.
There are two basic manners known to somewhat alleviate the problems associated with a particular visitor's navigation of a convention hall. The most basic of the manners is a simple map of the exhibition floor provided beforehand or concurrent with entering the convention center. Of course, not everyone is adept at reading a map, and it can be labor-intensive for a visitor to first review a roster or exhibitors, select and target exhibitors to be visited, rank the exhibitors in terms of importance, compare the selected and ranked exhibitors to a map, and make notations on the map. Additionally, the map requires being carried and reviewed constantly while a visitor navigates and walks a convention floor. The map tends to become worn out from constant handling, and requires a visitor to carry the map (either in their hand, in a bag, or in a pocket) and reference the map with their hands. A visitor collects samples and brochures, which also requires either hands or pockets to carry, and carrying the map can then become a nuisance in and of itself. Placing the map in a bag or pocket with exhibitor literature, only to be retrieved a short time later, also becomes a nuisance.
Another manner for navigating a convention floor is by providing some type of hand-held device. While the hand-held device may include a map, it nonetheless is definitionally a hand-held device and presents the same issues to a visitor's ability to have their hands free to carry exhibitor literature, greet others by shaking hands, or manually inspect an exhibitor's wares. In order for the hand-held device to be more active in navigation, regardless of the manner operation thereof, notification to a visitor is necessarily done either by an audible sound or a vibration, as is known for cellular telephones and hand-held device technologies. In the din and roar of a convention hall, an audible sound may not be heard, or may not be recognized by a visitor as coming from their own device, and certainly adds to the cacophony of the environment. With respect to vibration, a visitor has to rely on the hand-held device being present in their hand or otherwise close to their body so that the vibration is recognized. If the vibrating device is placed in a bag, or placed in a pocket with literature between the device and the person's body, the efficacy and utility of the device is greatly diminished if not nullified.
Accordingly, there has been a need for improved methods and apparatus for providing a booth at an exposition or convention, for tailoring an exhibit to different groups of visitors, and for assisting in navigation of a convention center or hall.